Mercury Living Presense

[Alastair Reynolds]

http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/mercury.html( thanks O)

Great Site for fans of early 1 mic and 3 mic techniques and early Stereo (50s and 60s)

For those not familiar with Mercury Living Presence CDs and SACDs they are well worth seeking out. Stunning Dynamics and soundstage and outstanding performances. You would be amazed to think you're listening to a recording over 50 years old.

The rest of the site is great for Vinyl fans as well... I'm sure Rick has already spent hours meandering through it

[rick]

nah i gotta give you this one alastair i have never seen it
its looks great and i dont have time to read it at the moment .... !

but i think it has saturday night written all over it

[Chinagraf]

How rockin is Wilma Cozart Fine.. man I woulda loved to have her as a Nanna.

[Milo]

Great site, Alastair, hours of fine viewing.

[Alastair Reynolds]

The Living Presence recording techniques were pretty impressive.
No eq, no compression, no limiting, no filtering. just careful microphone placement, cutting edge recorders and pre-amps , excellent acoustic spaces and brilliant performances
The Piano work of Byron Janis playing "Pictures at an Exhibition", (mentioned on this webpage) is still the best recorded piano I have ever heard. The story behind this recording, where the master tape was "lost"/ mislaid for 30 years and only released for the first time in 1991 on CD is amazing in itself.
The Super Audio CD versions are the original 3 Tracks of the Master tapes and a 2 Channel Stereo reduction in the Hybrid disc.
I have many Mercury discs ranging from Balalaika recorded in Russia in 1962, Mono one mic recordings from 1952 of the Detroit Symphony, The Romero Family -Spanish Classical guitar , even Circus marches. All are amazing to listen to. They include details of mics and equipment used, even in the case of the 1812 Overture, the Age , composition and Bore size of the cannons at West Point used for the recording (And a bonus clean track of the cannons only). They were certainly pioneers in recording arts and sciences.
If there were enough interest it would be good to set up a listening day with some fine speakers and amplifiers and the odd bevvy, maybe in the warmer months. A good chance to yabba to other TR tragics about all things audio.

[jkhuri44]

^ that sounds awesome, would be keen on that...

[langleycello]

Thanks so much Alastair for bringing this to the fore. For years I have been spellbound by the amazing performances and recording quality of MLP. I concur with everything you say.

Thanks again for bringing up this illuminating website.

Stephen

[mylesgm]

If there were enough interest it would be good to set up a listening day with some fine speakers and amplifiers and the odd bevvy, maybe in the warmer months. A good chance to yabba to other TR tragics about all things audio.

In Melbourne, I and several others would be all over this...

too much to hope for I guess. I grew up listening to these recordings on my Dads Akai cross field head RtR. When he said 'tubes' I imagines glass tubes from the mic to the reel to reel some how carrying the sound.

M